Ahh, exciting, I'm back! Much sooner this time, I hope! This one ended up being a lot shorter than I planned, oopsies O.O Ah, well, enjoy, anyway. THANK YOU SO MUCH to my reviewers:

Motet: It's not a big deal, no worries :D Thanks, and I will try my best to keep this rolling :D

Paine3: WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! HURRAY FOR PAINE3! throws confetti at you YOU WIN, hahaha XD I don't know what you win, but... good job:D And here I thought I was being tricky XD

theweirdperson: Oh, I love cliffhangers, don't you:D Yeah, I liked that too, haha XD Thanks for reviewing!

Enjoy!

Everyone was watching Lulu interestedly. Yuna was also looking extremely excited—it seemed that Tidus would at last be coming home, assuming that they got him out of wherever he was safely. Lulu continued with her story.

"When I was starting as a guardian, I was guarding a woman I knew… Lady Ginnem, as some of you may know. Some of you also may know… that Lady Ginnem died on the pilgrimage." Lulu swallowed hard, and continued with difficulty. "Lady Ginnem had two guardians: me, and her sister, Kana."

Lulu was cut off by a gasp from both Ryuen and Meena.

"The day Lady Ginnem died, Kana and I both got out safely, but we were separated. Three days later, Kana became so overcome with grief that she committed suicide by jumping into the ocean in Besaid. I thought she had died, and I grieved for her, but it has become apparent to me that she is still thriving. There is no other mage in the world that could have cast that spell, other than Aya, I'd guess," Lulu said somberly. She was speaking with much less eloquence than usual—a very un-Lulu like tone, in fact.

"Kana killed my mother," Ryuen breathed after it was silent for a moment.

Rikku looked violated. "She killed your mother, she nearly killed us, and now she's got Wakka and Tidus? We've got to do something!"

Ryuen turned to Lulu. "Wow, you really knew her?"

"Yeah, I did," Lulu said. "And I know where she is."

Everyone gasped in shock.

"Now, all we need to do is get an attack plan together," Lulu continued. "Let's split up."

"I think someone should look for Aya," Rikku said concernedly.

"Ryuen and I should do that," Meena offered.

Suddenly, Rikku's radio crackled. "Rikku?"

"What, Shinra?"

"That sphere you guys found awhile back? It's done. Want to watch it?"

Yuna, Rikku, Lulu, and Paine exchanged glances, and bolted for the door. They ran nearly all the way back to the airship with Ryuen and Meena trailing hopelessly behind. When they got there, Shinra had it all ready to go, and he pushed play, each of them as anxious as ever to see what had taken so long.

The picture was still extremely bad, but the audio was just fine. It was a young sounding woman, with a rather cruel voice. "I cannot use here for my experiments anymore," the woman was saying. "It could be discovered. I mean, if it weren't for that dratted—I guess I'll just set this as a trap for anybody that might wander along here. Just know that all my work on resurrection… ruined. By one little tiny flood, too. And if I'm not careful, someone will sense that I'm here… well, best be off… and I think I know the perfect place to go…"

The sphere cut off. Lulu's eyes widened. "So that's her plan—"

"What?" everyone chorused immediately.

"She's going to try to bring Lady Ginnem back to life," Lulu replied quietly.

"That's so illegal!" Ryuen gasped.

"She's practically a serial killer, how is that being illegal gonna stop her?" Paine pointed out.

"Wait… so Wakka and Tidus are with a serial killer?" Rikku asked frightfully.

Paine cast a glance at Rikku, but didn't reply.

"What are we going to do?" Rikku moaned.

"Back to the plan," Lulu said, forcibly leading the conversation in another direction, "like I said, I think we should split up."

Yuna shook her head. "No way! Against an evil witch like that? She'd kill us in a second!"

"If we're all in one group, then if she finds one of us, she finds all of us," Paine murmured. "Brilliant, Lulu."

"Wait, wait," Rikku interrupted, "how is setting us up to get killed in any way, shape, or form brilliant?"

"Do you want Wakka and Tidus back or not?" Paine asked her sharply.

"Awww…" Rikku moaned. "It's such a hard question," she whined. "Of course I want them back, I just don't want to die."

Lulu began mumbling a prayer that her mother had taught her, just to comfort herself. She had used it often for such things. Her mother had told her that if she ever was really in trouble to say the prayer, and, if she did it right, something would happen. Lulu was convinced that her mother wasn't right about something happening, because it had never worked for her before. It was just a small source of comfort.

Ryuen stared at Lulu. "Where'd you learn that?"

"Learn what? The prayer?"

"Yeah. It's the incantation for the type of Ultima spell that mages use."

"WHAT?"

"You didn't know?" Ryuen asked her.

"Obviously!" Lulu said in disbelief. "So this whole time, there was a way more powerful Ultima that I could have been using!"

"Well, it takes a lot of power to execute it," Ryuen said. "I'm sure something like that would be able to kill Kana."

"She's really powerful," Lulu said. "Are you positive?"

"Well, if we could track down Aya, then I'm sure we could get the job done," he said with a nod.

"We should try radioing her again," Yuna suggested. "Maybe she just didn't hear it last time or something…"

Aya had been helping Kana for a full four hours without a break. The worst part about the whole thing was that Kana was absolutely brilliant, and Aya couldn't see why she even needed her help. Evidently, she must have had something Kana wanted.

She had been shown around the whole cave—Kana had claimed it was necessary, since she said she was going to send Aya on errands to get things from different rooms. She had about three rooms full of magic potions and things, a library, a room that she kept locked, which Aya was sure the ethers were in, Kana's bedroom, which was also locked, and the laboratory, where they were working. Aya wasn't sure where Wakka and Tidus were, but that didn't matter… contact wouldn't be necessary for the escape that they had planned…

"Aya, go to the second room on the right, and get me one of the bottles of clear liquid from the shelf against the left wall."

…which would happen about now.

Aya walked down the hallway, purposefully bypassing the correct room. She stopped in front of the locked room and stared at it thoughtfully. After a moment, she shut her eyes and sent a quick message to Tidus, who had swore that he would realize…

An ear splitting scream coming from a room on the other side of the caves rang through the hallway, and Aya smiled—Kana was now probably running in the opposite direction…

Aya placed her hand gently on the door. Just as she thought—there were magic wards on the door. She smirked. She pressed her other palm onto the door. There was a small clicking noise, and the door slowly opened. So much for magic wards, Aya thought. Then again, I doubt she knows that I invented that spell at all.

She went into the room, and immediately spotted a safe. She quickly placed her palms over the combination lock, and the safe sprang open. She found her belt, bangles, and pearl anklet in it—jackpot. She quickly fastened her anklet, and poured two ethers down her throat. She hurriedly performed a transportation spell—she didn't want Kana to notice that the locked door's ward wasn't there anymore. She felt a soaring feeling in the pit of her stomach—she was finally home free. She didn't really know where she was, but she knew where she was going—and then, she let out a scream—where had this sudden stabbing pain come from…?

Wheeee, hurrah for more cliffies:D Thanks for reading, don't forget to make my day and review!

Preview for next chapter:

Aya opened her eyes--what had happened? This place looked somehow familiar to her, but... what the hell.

Where was she...?

Suddenly, she saw a familiar face looming over her--Ryuen.

"Ryuen--" she began, but found that she could not talk.

Ryuen was suddenly motioning for someone else to come over... Aya found that she couldn't hear him...

ACK, what's wrong with her! Read the next chapter to find out!

Thank you :D

Lulala